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| Why BAJ not supporting demand of Jammu-based VC for CU? -- I | | STARK REALITY | |
RUSTAM
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 3: Bar Association Jammu (BAJ) deserves kudos. Ever since March 8, when the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) legislator was allowed by Congress leader and Revenue Minister Raman Bhalla to introduce the fundamentally bad, draconian and anti-women Permanent Resident (Disqualification) Bill (PRDB) in the Legislative Council, the BAJ has been organizing programmes after programmes to register its protest against the bill and demanding its withdrawal. So for, it has struck work on two occasions and paralyzed the function of the courts and organized two long marches. On one occasion, a number of agitating lawyers, including women lawyers, confronted the police, suffered lathi blows in the process and courted arrest. The BAJ has undoubtedly won over the people of Jammu province in general and daughters of the state in particular.
Convinced that the Valley-based parties like the National Conference (NC) and the PDP are determined to humiliate women of the state by adopting the PRDB, that seeks to snatch all the citizenship rights of daughters of the state who had already married non-state subjects and who will marry non-state subjects in future, the BAJ has appealed the people of Jammu to observe a complete shutdown on April 6 in case the government fails to withdraw the PRDB before March 5, when the current budget session ends. It has sought people’s support saying the proposed legislation is not just anti-women but it is also anti-Jammu and anti-national. Besides, the BAJ has declared that it would convene a meeting on Sunday on the issue and would want the Jammu-based legislators and others to take part in the proposed meeting so that a strategy is worked out to defeat the government’s move.
There is no doubt that the people would make common cause with the BAJ and make the proposed shut down a massive affair whether or not the Jammu-based legislators join the gender-equality crusade. After all, the BAJ has all along stood solidly behind the people of Jammu and the nation as and when required. The memory of the role it played during the Amarnath land agitation days in 2008 is still fresh to be forgotten.
It is important to note that the BAJ has not only demanded immediate withdrawal of the PRDB. It has also suggested that Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, JKLF chief Yasin Malik and APHC (M) Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, who like NC president and Union Minister Farooq Abdullah, People’s Conference (PC) chairman Sajjad Gani Lone and hundreds of other Kashmiri Muslims, have married non-state subject females be declared non-state subjects and deprived of their citizenship rights. The argument of the BAJ is that there has to be only one yardstick and uniform rule for everyone. In other words, it holds the view that if the daughters of the state are to forego their citizenship rights on the ground that they have married or they would marry the non-state subject males, the male state subjects who have married and who would marry the non-state subject females in future should also be brought under the ambit of the draconian PRDB.
The BAJ is absolutely right. The state government cannot have two sets of rules – one for the daughters of the state and other for the male state subjects. We are living in modern times, 21st century and not in medieval times when the reactionaries reigned supreme.
However, when the BAJ airs such views on Omar Abdullah, Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, it doesn’t mean that the black-coated community of lawyers will support the PRDB if it brings under its purview those Kashmiri Muslim males who have already married the non-state subject females or who would marry the non-state subject females in future. It will not support the bill whatever its new shape. What the BAJ has said in this regard is just an argument against those advocating the need for adopting the anti-women bill. The BAJ believes in the dictum “Gods are pleased where women are respected” and, hence, what it wants is gender equality, as also full freedom to daughters of the state to marry persons of their choice within or outside the state. (To be concluded)
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